Notwithstanding all the marvels effected in Mary's soul, her exterior conduct differed not at all from that of her nextdoor neighbor. Mary washed and cooked, she mended the clothes and weaved the material, she went to the well for water and to the store for what they needed for their simple meals. She rarely appears while her Son is being treated with reverence and enthusiasm, but she is prominent when He undergoes the humiliations of His Passion and Death.
What an indictment is this hiddenness of Mary of all the external showing which many of us rate so highly! The real life is the life of grace in the soul. "All the beauty of the King's daughter is from within." We are seeing things awry when we judge merely by man's achievements, when life is considered to be wasted unless it abounds in rush and excitement and agitation. Mary, the greatest of God's mere creatures, lived a very uneventful, humdrum life in despised Nazareth. In this tranquillity the life of grace flourished. Provided that that true life be fostered, what happens exteriorly where or how we live is of comparative unimportance.
It is impossible to stress this truth with sufficient emphasis, more especially in our times of ceaseless movement. St. Teresa writes many pages to tell us of the need to be up and doing in the labors of the active life, and she tends to frown on even her own contemplative nuns if they shirk these labors on the plea that they need extra time for their prayer. But it would be possible, nonetheless, to attach undue importance to such advice. St. Teresa, in the first place, is speaking to nuns vowed to a life of complete separation from the world. She certainly would lessen the emphasis if she were addressing us who live in the heart of the world's turmoil; and, secondly, she presupposes in her reader a period of noviceship during which love of silence and solitude have been assiduously cultivated.
Mary's interior life shows us how imitable she is. Unlike some of the great saints who terrify us by their heroic penances and long vigils and gigantic labors, Mary did nothing to attract attention to herself. Her life is a most striking illustration of the truth that the garment of great sanctity is woven from the common stuff of everyday life.
Mary, kneeling at my priedieu, where I have come each day to pray, I beg you to show me how to avail myself of all the small happenings of my humdrum existence to infuse into them the motive of divine love. Every fragment must be gathered. It is wonderful that my soul can grow uninterruptedly in divine grace. Show me how to make all things work together unto good and assist me all along the road of life as I keep trying to put into practice what you deign to let me see.